Conn. MBA grads start social site "shizzlr.com"

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Two University of Connecticut business school graduates have received support from the state's venture capital fund to begin an online social network.

Nick Jaensch (Yensh) and Keith Bessette received $350,000 in private and state money to develop shizzlr.com, a corner of the Internet dedicated to college students and 20-somethings.

Shizzlr is intended to bring together friends who text message their social plans. Users opt in those they want to include.

Jaensch said that while most people are in touch with a wide range of people through Facebook, shizzlr is designed for a small circle of close friends.

Peter V. Longo, president of the state investment agency Connecticut Innovations, said he was eager to support the Internet start-up because he believes it will eventually generate jobs.

Pakistan: US push on detainee 'counterproductive'

ISLAMABAD (AP) -- Any U.S. pressure on Islamabad to release an American held for shooting dead two Pakistanis will be "counterproductive," a senior government official said Saturday.

Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir issued the warning as the dispute between the two countries over the man's fate reached new levels, with U.S. officials threatening to take a variety of measures to get him freed.

The U.S. insists the American, Raymond Davis, is an embassy staffer who has diplomatic immunity and that he shot the two Pakistanis in self-defense when they tried to rob him at gunpoint in the eastern city of Lahore in late January.

Pakistani officials, fearful of a backlash in a population where anti-American fervor is widespread, have avoided verifying his diplomatic status and have referred the case to the courts. Police are pushing for murder charges against the 36-year-old Davis, a former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier.

U.S. officials have said they are considering several ways to display Washington's displeasure over the man's detention, which they say violates international agreements covering diplomatic ties.

Options include delaying a Washington meeting on the war in Afghanistan scheduled for later this month and slowing down visa processing for Pakistanis wanting to come to America.

Also on the table is the possibility of cutting back on military and educational training programs with the Pakistani armed forces and civilian educational, scientific, cultural and local and state government exchanges, said American officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is before a court.

Pakistan is considered a key to U.S. success in neighboring Afghanistan, making it difficult for Washington to sever too many ties. At the same time, Pakistan relies on large amounts of U.S. aid and protection, but the government seems paralyzed in the face of outrage over the shootings, much of it driven by the media.

S.African police arrest man on terror charges

JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- A South African man accused of threatening to unleash biological weapons on Britain and the United States unless he was paid millions of dollars was arrested Saturday, police said. Authorities said they had not found evidence he was capable of carrying out the threats.

In a statement, South African police said a six-month terror investigation by South African, British and U.S. officials culminated with the arrest of the suspect in northwestern South Africa. Police spokeswoman Sally de Beer said the businessman would not be named until he appears in court Monday in Johannesburg.

"This biological agent, if deployed, would have caused the destruction of property and resulted in major economic loss," the police statement said. "This was therefore regarded as a very serious threat."

De Beer said the threats were made repeatedly in letters and e-mails. Police were searching the man's home and other sites, de Beer said Saturday.

The suspect threatened to carry out the threats unless he was given $4 million.

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said she could not discuss the specifics of the investigation.

"However we can confirm that this was an ongoing and close collaboration with the South African Police Service, Scotland Yard and American law enforcement based at the U.S. Embassy," she said.

Scotland Yard confirmed that its counterterrorism officers had provided support to the investigation but declined further comment.

LeBron James, fan exchange words

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- LeBron James took a moment during Friday's game against the Detroit Pistons to fire back at a heckling fan who insulted his mother.

After hearing a fan sitting near the court behind the Heat's bench mention his mother's name, James walked toward the scorer's table and addressed the male fan.

"I don't care what you say to me. I don't give a [expletive] what you say," James said to the fan. "But don't be disrespectful."

The exchange came during a break in action with 1.7 seconds left in the first quarter and was picked up by television microphones.

James responded to the fan, who shouted the comments within earshot of James' two young sons who sat courtside near the Heat's bench.

The fan, who declined to give his name to ESPN.com, said he was offended by James' cursing. He was also told by security to refrain from heckling the rest of the game or he would be escorted out.

Scavenging to survive in India's belt of fire

BOKAPAHARI, India (AP) -- The villagers set out from this shattered hamlet long before dawn, walking without flashlights on trails they can navigate without looking.

They pass small mountains of mining slag that, in the darkness, are just blurry silhouettes. They weave barefoot through brush. When the trail reaches a dirt road, they descend into the open pit of a coal mine. Then, as the night sky starts turning to gray, they begin hacking coal from an exposed black seam.

A few hours later the scavengers return to their villages, their baskets filled with stolen coal.

They return to visions of the apocalypse.

They come back to villages where smoke pours from fissures in the earth, where flames from underground fires lick at trails, where oily fumes leave visitors gagging. In places, Bokapahari looks like nearly every other village around here - cramped stone houses plastered with mud, children playing in dirt roads, tangled electricity lines - until, off at the edge of town, the earth is buckled and warped, riven by cracks and scorched by burn marks.

Beneath the scavengers' villages are dozens of underground coal fires, one dating to 1918. Above the fires are thousands of people living at the ragged edge of existence.

This is home.

"There's no beauty here," said Mahesh Prasad Verma, 40, who has spent his life on the fringes of the thriving but deeply troubled coal city of Jharia, in the remote eastern state of Jharkhand. "Everywhere there is just mines and fire, smoke and dust."

Behind that smoke, though, the dozen or so villages where fires have erupted into the open reveal a complex portrait of modern Indian life. There is economic opportunity, government incompetence and environmental afflictions. There are nearly 700 families who have reluctantly moved to an isolated resettlement project, and 54,000 more families across Jharia who officials say need to move.

There are thousands of people who desperately fear losing their grip on the bottom rungs of India's economic ladder.

"The government officials visit us and say we have to leave, because of the fire," said Verma. "But where could we go? Where would we live?"

And, most important: What would he do to survive?

"We scavenge coal and we sell it," said Verma, a seventh-grade dropout, standing amid the smoke of a half-dozen bonfires lit to reduce raw coal to sellable chunks. "That's all we do here."

India is increasingly a land of opportunity, a country of 1.2 billion where galloping economic growth created 40,000 new millionaires just in 2009. There's an exploding middle class buying up flat-screen TVs and sending their children to English-language private schools.

If much of the new money is concentrated in a handful of cities, with their clusters of software engineers and real estate developers, hints of wealth have reached deep into India, even to Jharia, a city of 500,000 in the heart of the country's coal belt.

In a country ravenous for energy, and largely dependent on coal, the city has boomed. Today, shoppers in Jharia's dusty, potholed streets can buy Whirlpool washing machines and Sony televisions. They can shop for used Hondas at the glass-fronted motorcycle dealership. It's an ugly city beset by troubles, but it still offers far more opportunities than it once did.

Bokapahari, and its grim neighboring villages, are the dark reflection of India's new world. Here the only opportunities lie in scavenged coal.

Because as one segment of Indian society has been lifted into the middle class, hundreds of millions of others have been left behind, widening an ever-expanding chasm between rich and poor.

If the Indian government hails the country as a modern economic powerhouse, many statistics tell a different story: 20 percent of all children are malnourished; rural unemployment is nearly 30 percent and more than a third of the population lives on less than $1 per day.

In places like Bokapahari, they say, at least they earn more than that. They are villages where misery meets opportunity, and where what looks like hell to an outsider looks like survival to the residents.