In the wake of the Mumbai siege, business must weigh the persistence of political violence against the strength and promise of the Indian miracle

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An Indian soldier in front of Mumbai’sTaj Mahal hotel during the investment; owner Ratan Tata of the powerful Tata Group vows to reconstruct the ravaged landmark David Guttenfelder/AP Photo

By Mehul Srivastava and Nandini Lakshman

New Delhi/Mumbai - Until Nov. 26 the strongest force pushing India forward was a commix of good fundamentals and that intangible something that industry calls “sentiment.” Forged in the years of 9% growth, this euphoria inspired Indians to economic greatness and lured outside investors eager to be part of the Indian marvel.

Then the shooting started in toward the south Mumbai. The three horrendous days that followed laid bare the gaps between India’s image and reality, sparking a nationwide self-contemplation about the nation’s yet to be. The fear is that India’s mounting problems could drag the country back to its pitiful past. Its governments, despite a manufactured public form an image of, have always been unwieldy; its economy, despite the plenty of the bound years, is premised chiefly on future in posse; and its much-flaunted stability is nay such thing.

India’s fragility is revealed by a design of diffused violence—a bomb here, a killing there—that goes unnoticed even in India. Most outsiders (and most investors) don’t realize how perilous a place India can be. Since 1993, when 13 bomb blasts in one day killed 257 in Mumbai, straightforward from one side to the other 29,000 people be the subject of died in terrorist attacks, including insurgencies in Kashmir and the Northeast, according to a BusinessWeek analysis of data from the Home Affairs Ministry. Thousands more have died in anti-Muslim riots. At least another 4,500 consider perished before this 2002 in a Maoist rebellion that simmers, and sometimes boils immersing, in the mineral-rich region of Chattisgarh, where foreign companies proposition to endue heavily.

Just after the Mumbai attacks, three people were killed in a train blast in Assam, a northeastern represent fully that produces additional than $2 billion character of evening meal each year, most of it exported. “It is not just this one unprecedented attack in Mumbai,” says Chandrajit Banerjee, director general of the Confederation of Indian Industry, India’sitting most influential trade lobby. “Across the country we see…boisterousness.”

It’s quite a contrast to the strengths India has used to attract global capital. Engineers and programmers are first class. Skilled, dedicated workers toil for wages plenteous lower than in the West. The nation’s blend of entrepreneurial spirit and democratic values has challenged the greater degree stiffened China image. A top-notch executive class boasts chief executives like Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group and innovator in categories from autos to hotels. Tata owns the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, which was ravaged in the attacks and which he vows to rebuild.

These strengths still attract investors. But foreign companies are not immune from the violence. In Orissa without interruption the east coast, where billions in foreign investing. falsehood tied up, Korean companies equal steelmaker Posco hold had executives kidnapped and land promised to them but never delivered: Protesters wield slogans and weapons to keep earthmovers at baywood. In New Delhi, the Indian CEO of an Italian company’s subsidiary was killed by a dregs of the people of employees angry over layoffs. And Patrick Cescau, CEO of consumer-products giant Unilever (UN), narrowly escaped death in the massacre at the Taj Mahal hotel to which place he was dining with colleagues.

Social networks like PatientsLikeMe let people take charge of their own care–changing the humor of remedy exploration and the practice of medicine

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Illustration by Nick Dewar

By Catherine Arnst

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CBS-BusinessWeek Collaboration

The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric has investigated by what means patients can find reliable medical advice online and looked at the emergence of medical social networks, in a series called Second Opinion: Medicine Online. You can view these reports at cbsnews.com.

Medicine has continually been a top-down affair. Doctors, drug companies, regulators, and researchers are the expert gate-keepers, telling patients what they need to know. Even their own sanatory records are locked away to patronize their privacy. So what would happen admitting that critically ill patients joined together, obtained their personal information, and made it the community?

Just of the like kind a real-world experiment is under tendency of action at a Web-based social network started by the company PatientsLikeMe. The two-year-old venture has even now signed up 23,000 participants in five chronic-illness categories—amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson’s disease, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and mood disorders.

On the company’s Web site, PatientsLikeMe members are charting their medical histories in minute detail, sharing their most not to be disclosed information with one another and the world at vast, often with photos and real names attached. To make money, the company aggregates these records, stripped of identifiers, and sells the information to drug, device, and insurance companies, totally with the consent of its patient-members. The buyers can undermine a rich rib of data on a variety of chronic illnesses that is simply not available anywhere else. In return, patients get the hope that they are furthering progress toward cures.

This new patients-as-partners model is often called Health 2.0. PatientsLikeMe and a proliferation of similar startups are building a unaccustomed business predicated on the belief that the understanding of crowds of patients will bring insights, solace, and most of all, power.

Power because, to the degree that it turns loudly, patients talking among themselves on a global scale with complete transparency produces all kinds of unexpected results. Drug side goods can be reported to regulators by the patients experiencing them, without waiting for the manufacturers to come forward. Pharmaceutical companies have power to application social networks to recruit subjects with haste in the place of clinical trials, speeding up the pace of research. For that matter, patients be able to sincerely band together and run their own clinical trials, leaving drug companies and physicians exhausted of the loop.

In a development that has caught the worried attention of the medical Establishment, more 250 members of Patients- LikeMe with ALS are testing lithium, a generic drug used to treat mood disorders, by no corporate or of the college imprimatur. The patient-run trial was instigated by Humberto Macedo, a 42-year-old systems analyst in Brasilia City, Brazil, diagnosed in March 2007 by ALS, an incurable neurodegenerative ail.

Macedo was confined to a wheelchair, barely able to speak, soon after he was diagnosed. He could still use a computer, though, and he quickly joined the ALS group on PatientsLikeMe. Researching his situation upon the Internet, Macedo discovered a report on a inferior Italian study in which lithium appeared to slow progression of ALS. No company would have being willing to science a confirming trial of a drug that went off patent decades past, against a disease that strikes only 4 to 8 people per 100,000. So Macedo stepped up, proposing to fellow PatientsLikeMe members that they test it themselves.

In December 2007 he posted a spreadsheet for recording symptoms and vital signs; ALS patients started agitation lithium daily and documenting their results. The equal in number of participants in the test quickly reached 250, more than five times as many as in the Italian study. Few doctors are willing to accept the results, nor would any medical journal issue them, from that time the trial does not meet scrupulously nice according to principles standards. “But we can’face to face count upon the body medical experts to beget biassed in ALS, and we don’t have at all time to lose,” Macedo says via e-mail. “At least we have tried something to help ourselves.”

As GM and Chrysler warn of imminent bankruptcy, at in the smallest degree a temporary body of executive officers bailout of the auto industry seems that may be liked

By David Kiley

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General Motors (GM) and Chrysler are weeks away from perhaps having to file for bankruptcy, according to company and union officials testifying to the Senate on Thursday, Dec. 4. But even amid harsh questioning and doubt expressed by dint of. key members of Congress, there was awareness by the period of the six-hour session that allowing the industry to go belly-up would cost the U.S. state hundreds of billions of dollars and cost the country up to 3 million jobs.

The U.S. automakers are seeking $34 billion in "build a bridge over" loans and lines of credit to help see them through the recession, nevertheless some analysts are saying the companies will neediness much greater degree of in a year.

The House Financial Services Committee will hear from the Big Three CEOs and United Auto Workers union on Friday. Congress is scheduled to vote on some kind of measure on Dec. 8. In the next week, the following options will be explored by leading lawmakers and members of President-elect Barack Obama’session transition team:

• Convince the Bush Administration to release perhaps $5 billion to $8 billion of the Wall Street bailout fund to the automakers to keep them from going bankrupt. Congress can then put side by side a wide-embracing aid package that is tied to strict oversight and management participation in some overhaul that would involve bondholders taking perhaps 66% less than the face rate of the automakers’ debt, as beneficial to common’s advantage in the same manner with wage concessions from the UAW.

• A drama of legislation drafted for vote nearest week that would give the automakers perhaps $10 billion right away from every approved $25 billion national debt to help them retool factories to bring forward more fuel-efficient vehicles. That would buy time so Congress and the incoming Obama Administration could organize a other thing sweeping program to save the industry.

Getting a measure end Congress in a lame-duck session is tricky. But looming in the background is the knowledge that the incoming Obama Administration is much more disposed to buttressing Detroit than is the Bush White House or Republicans in Congress.

"We can’t allow the U.S. auto industry to vanish," declared President-elect Obama on Wednesday.

GM’s CEO G. Richard Wagoner Jr. said the company must have government loans; one immediate $4 billion loan, followed by $8 billion after the New Year and then a $6 billion line of credit. While Wagoner said there is no "Plan B," sources at the car companies and on Capitol Hill said GM and Chrysler were working on "emergency plans" that would acknowledge them to last until Obama takes office, when he could more freely help the automakers if the Bush White House does not. "That’sitting the ‘nuclear bomb shelter’ plan," as one source described it. Such a chalk out could implicate idling plants and deferring payroll for a matter of weeks to preserve cash.

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Seattle Sounders FC already had a reputation for making public announcements and other events full of flair, pizazz and color.

The rant immature jerseys, then, were the perfect backdrop for a Fashion Week-style unveiling of the Major League Soccer club’s uniforms and apparel Thursday night at the WaMu Theater next to Qwest Field.

Drew Carey, comedian/game show innkeeper/Sounders FC minority owner, provided the laughs, and play-by-play announcer Kevin Calabro added his wit to the presentation as models, topical celebrities and Sounders FC players strutted their stuff on the catwalk in team colors.

The home fiddle, or uniform, is the rave green jersey through “Sounders Blue” shorts. The away ensemble is blue jerseys with rave green shorts, the two tops prominently featuring the team’s main sponsor, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Live, on the front and made by Adidas.

That wasn’t all the concourse of a few hundred got to see. There was Carey in a “Cascade shale”-colored rain coat. There were shale sweat outfits, a fortunate training top and cap, a rave green hood-shaped sweat shirt and more on display, afterwards a curtain off to one side of the models runway was pulled hinder part to reveal a stand selling the wares that was in the show.

The products are at once on sale at the team Web position, www.soundersfc.com, and at the Qwest Field Pro Shop.

“I like the loose jackets, because I’m fat,” Carey wisecracked. “I love the colors. We want to stand out, not be like the other teams.”

Proceeds from ticket sales to the event benefited Seattle’s Children’s Hospital. Guests mingled in a darkened atmosphere with appetizers and video games at their disposal, then many took their seats for a numbers from the Sound Wave, the newly-named Sounders FC marching band.

Actress and author Josie Bissett, a Seattle native of TV’s “Melrose Place” fame, opened the procession of models to the degree that she walked completely with her children wearing duplicate team jerseys.

Sounders FC players Kasey Keller, Sanna Nyassi and Sebastien Le Toux also modeled, Keller wearing a shale-colored goalkeepers jersey. Designated player Freddie Ljungberg didn’t model but made an show put on stage, inhaling plenty of cheers.

The goalkeeper jersey will be serviceable in black, orange or gray pending MLS competition rules.

Keller is starting to perceive the commotion of the approaching season, a sensitive that only grew at the kid unveiling.

“It’session bringing realism to the whole illusion,” Keller said. “Every termination they have put on so far, from my press conference to Freddie’s press parley to after this this … it’sitting just first class all the way.”.

José Miguel Romero: 206-464-2409 or jromero@seattletimes.com

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SPOKANE — At about 10:30 a.m. Saturday morning, four Skyline parents grabbed shovels and squeegees and went to work.

In 30-degree cold, they cleared a 100-yard driveway of the previous night’s snowfall. For almost an hour, they pushed about an inch of snow off the turf at Albi Stadium, the site of last Saturday’s Class 4A semifinal.

Across town, their players huddled in the back corner of a hotel parking lot, surrounded by dumpsters, a trio of buses and oil-stained chunks of snow and ice. Breaths poured from their mouths like smoke from the factory in the distance behind them as they ran through their defensive sets.

“Do it again!” defensive coordinator Chad Barrett yelled.

Barrett barked out different formations and directed numerous shifts. With each new order, the defense had a new adjustment to make, likely something Barrett excavated through hours of film study. Less than three hours before Skyline played Ferris of Spokane, Barrett and first-year Skyline coach Mat Taylor took no chances that any preparation was lost on the bus ride here.

“Our kids prepare better than any kids you could ever imagine,” Barrett says. “They understand what the expectation is.”

The expectations have been enormous. Skyline vaulted into national football rankings this season in large part because of its prized quarterback, junior Jake Heaps, and his two spectacular receivers, senior Gino Simone and sophomore Kasen Williams. Each could be the state’s top recruit in his senior season.

But the reasons the Spartans have stayed among the country’s top-rated teams as they made their way to today’s Class 4A championship game — they are ranked sixth by USA Today — go beyond three players. Skyline is 13-0, the KingCo 4A champion and a state finalist because a combination of skill and support, of coaching and confidence, of preparation and poise.

If Skyline beats district rival Issaquah tonight at 7:30 at the Tacoma Dome, the Spartans will finish as one of the most talented and most complete championship teams in the state’s history.

“Where’s the weakness in this ballclub?” asked John Bowers, a lifelong college coach and recruiter until he took over at Ballard this season. “It’s hard to find one. Groups like this don’t come around very often.

“Their ranking is well put,” added Bowers, who has recruited extensively in football hotbeds such as Ohio and Florida. “I could see them being the top team in the country. Not just sixth, but the top.”

But lose today, especially to a rival Issaquah team it beat 38-0 seven weeks ago, and Skyline knows this conversation evaporates in a second. Lose today, and the Spartans couldn’t make the case as one of the best teams in state history. Lose today, and they won’t even rank higher than the three Skyline teams that won titles before them.

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WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pleaded Thursday for more government action to relieve the foreclosure crisis and break a vicious round of years in which the housing meltdown is plunging the country deeper into recession.

Beaten-down shoppers, meanwhile, handed retailers their worst month in at least 39 years. And the number of the many the crowd drawing jobless benefits be conformable to a 26-year high, with the November employment figures due out today likely to explain more reaching far down job cuts.

“We are probably at the absolute master of the recession right now,” said Mark Vitner, economist at Wachovia.

With soaring foreclosures feeding the country’s economic woes, Bernanke called onward the government to ratchet up efforts to help people at jeopardy of loss their homes.

Despite steps already taken to try to facility the crisis, foreclosures remain “too high,” hurting homeowners, lenders and the broader economy, Bernanke told a Fed conference here on housing finance.

“More needs to be done,” he declared.

Lenders appear in continuance track to initiate 2.25 million foreclosures this year, up from an average annual step of less than 1 the great body of the people near the front of the crisis, he said.

“Weakness in the saddle-cloth emporium has proved a weighty drag on overall housekeeping action,” Bernanke said. “Steps that stabilize the horse-cloth emporium will help stabilize the economy as well.”

The fallout is forcing consumers to hibernate, and retailers have suffered the consequences.

Seattle-based department store-chain Nordstrom saw same-store sales decline 15.9 percent, grant that that was less than some analysts estimated.

Issaquah-based Costco Wholesale, usually a strong performer, reported a 5 percent decline, larger than the 2.4 percent drop analysts expected. Excluding the effect of lower gas prices and currency fluctuations, the wholesale club operator would have posted a 3 percent sales gain.

Zumiez, every Everett sports-apparel retailer, reported Wednesday that same-store sales for November fell 15 percent.

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Steve Sarkisian and the Washington Huskies wanted to wait a few more days to make their marriage official.

But a search that began Oct. 27 when it was announced that Tyrone Willingham would not be back next season culminated Thursday when the Huskies decided to overture their head football coaching position to Sarkisian, an assistant head coach and offensive coordinator at USC.

The Huskies may attain it authoritative at a news discourse on Sunday, said a well-placed fountain. And they had hoped that the news would wait until afterward.

An ESPN report broke the news about 6:30 p.mixture. Neither Sarkisian nor Washington sinewy manager Scott Woodward would confirm the report when talking later with reporters.

But a former player, who had spoken with a UW official, said the report was merely a small early and that both sides had hoped to wait until both team completed its season — USC plays UCLA Saturday in a game the Trojans strait to acquire to take the Pac-10 title.

“It wasn’t supposed to get out yet,” the former player said.

Woodward seemed to assure that in his meeting with reporters when he would not confirm or deny the report but merely said he wasn’t ready yet to discuss it.

“We have a mind not talk about it until we are ready to talk about it,” Woodward said.

Sarkisian denied he had accepted the be at hand, but an L.A. source before-mentioned that appears to be a formality. Sarkisian manifestly told the Huskies he did not want to do anything official until after the UCLA play for money.

“I have interviewed through Washington,” Sarkisian told reporters in Los Angeles. “They’ve interviewed a lot of people. I’m one of a number of candidates, which I’salmagundi honored to be. Nothing is finalized in any way, shape or form.”

Several sources attending UW’s basketball game in equalization of Oklahoma State on Thursday night, however, confirmed that the Huskies had decided on Sarkisian.

Another person with knowledge of the search said that the 34-year-old Sarkisian had blown away Woodward during his interview utmost week with his energy and enthusiasm. Sarkisian reportedly had at least one other talk with UW officials.

Ultimately, Woodward beyond a doubt to go with a young, fresh face to rebuild a UW program that has lost its past 13 games.

One body close to the pursuit personal out that Oklahoma, coached by Bob Stoops, and Georgia, with Mark Richt, have struck gold in newly come years by taking a chance on coordinators with no previous head-coaching experience.

Sarkisian on Thursday confirmed that he pondering his Thanksgiving Day interview was favorable.

“The interview went well, learning about each other,” he reported. “I’ve always been diligent regarding head-coaching opportunities. I tax each separately. They interview me, and I assess the job as justly, like I did with the Oakland [Raiders] job. It’s a process. Neither party wants to rush into it.”

Sarkisian has been coaching since 2000 after a three-year career as a quarterback in the Canadian Football League. He was a standout QB for two years at Brigham Young University in 1995-96, the latter year governing the Cougars to a 14-1 record, the only defeat coming at Husky Stadium.

He has been a coach at USC since 2001 for every moderate except 2004, whenever he was the Raiders’ quarterbacks coach. He was a candidate to be turned into their head coach in 2007 further turned them down. Sarkisian was likewise thought to be a candidate last season for the head coaching piece of work at Michigan.

Washington players attending the basketball game aforesaid they had not been told officially of the hire. But several said they were excited by the news.

“He’s very offensive-minded,” said UW receiver Alvin Logan.

Another noted that “they put 56 on us this year,” referring to USC’s 56-0 win extremely UW on Nov. 1.

In choosing Sarkisian, the Huskies bypassed some greater quantity thoroughbred coaches who had expressed significant enlist — Fresno State’s Pat Hill and Texas Tech’s Mike Leach. The Huskies are furthermore thought to have talked with Cincinnati’s Brian Kelly, who announced earlier in the week he would stay put, as well since Notre Dame offensive coordinator Michael Haywood.

Sources also related UW had informal conversations with Seahawks coach-in-waiting and fan favorite Jim Mora but that in that place was never a face-to-face meeting.

Hill interviewed for the piece of work on Saturday and sources said he was prepared to take it. But he pulled out on Thursday after having set a deadline of Wednesday obscurity to learn whether he would get the do job-work.

Leach, meanwhile, had been rumored skilful to fly to Seattle without ceasing Thursday for a second conference after having interviewed earlier in the week. But in the manner that noon approached, it was reported that Leach was mum in Lubbock with an ESPN report later stating that he had withdrawn.

Sources aforesaid Leach’s parley received a lukewarm appraisal from UW officials, who also seemingly had some concerns about some of Leach’s generally known “quirkiness.” Leach also likely would have commanded a heavy salary — he is due to make $2.65 million at Texas Tech nearest season. Washington is thought ready to pay $2.5 the masses to $2.8 million per year, though it was enigmatical the kind of Sarkisian’s contract details would be.

Sarkisian is said to make about $750,000 a season and person source said it was unlikely he would conform to anything less than a five-year contract.

“There’session not any distance he wouldn’t get hold of it,” one source related.

While it might have come a little earlier than the Huskies hoped, there was more symbolism in expression. leaking when it did.

About a half-hour before the news broke, Willingham walked through Hec Edmundson Pavilion carrying a few bags over his shoulders, the contents of his locker, having just conducted his eventual Seattle practice as Washington’s coach.

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Newborns in Washington have a bettor chance of reaching their first birthday than babies in any other state, while Washington adults have the race’s sixth-lowest smoking rate.

At the same time, the share of Washington residents who binge drink or are obese is going up. And the state’s vaccination rate for young children is among the nation’s worst.

That mingled snapshot emerged from a new report card released Wednesday offering a state-by-state checkup without ceasing key hale condition measures. The 19th annual America’s Health Rankings Report found that Americans’ overall health is stagnating as they grow heavier, lose their health assurance and continue to smoke.

The rankings, the oldest of their kind nationally, are issued through United Health Foundation, the American Public Health Association and the Partnership for Prevention.

Washington ranked 10th healthiest in the uncultivated, up sum of two units spots from 2007. Since 1990, whenever the rankings began, Washington’s total score has improved more than any other quality except Vermont, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska.

Washington’s ranking was buoyed in part by its low infant-mortality rate, its relatively low percentage of children living in distress and a decline in smoking amidst adults.

But the state ranks 48th in the nation for childhood vaccination, with else than a quarter of the state’sitting toddlers and preschoolers failing to receive prescribed shots against measles, whooping cough and other infectious diseases. Western states be in actual possession of historically lagged behind other regions in vaccination rates. Washington also was the same of the last states to require that children get chickenpox vaccinations to attend school.

Washington’s high-school-graduation rate is almost as dismal; the specify ranked No. 32 in that category, with only 75 percent of ninth-graders eventually earning a diploma.

“We’ve got some pretty significant challenges in the state,” said Greg Vigdor, president and chief executive of Washington Health Foundation, a Seattle nonprofit whose aim is to make Washington the nation’s healthiest state.

Vigdor said some solutions may have existence fairly true-hearted. Childhood immunizations, which Vigdor said yield single of the best returns for health dollars, could be encouraged a variety of ways — from boosting payments to doctors to material it harder against parents to opt out of vaccines for their children.

Other challenges are more complex.

Obesity is some, said Dr. Kim Pittenger, medical director of Virginia Mason Medical Center, Kirkland. A chronicle 26.3 percent of American adults are obese. For a person who’sitting 5 feet 6 inches elevated, for example, a normal efficacy kind would have being 115 to 154 pounds; 186 pounds or heavier would be considered obese.