October 6, 2004

Whenever a Japanese convoy leaves its base here in southern Iraq, the armored vehicles are so spotless that they appear to have just rolled out of a Tokyo car showroom into this crumbling Shiite Muslim town on the Euphrates. They lack the dents and dirt of other nations' vehicles. Perhaps that is because of the Japanese troops' attention to maintenance or perhaps, as the Iraqis here say, their increasing tendency to stay inside their base with the violence rising outside.

The buyout company Blackstone Group of New York is interested in buying KarstadtQuelle, the European retailer, a Blackstone official said, setting off a 15 percent gain in KarstadtQuelle's share price. Blackstone would consider buying all or parts of KarstadtQuelle, the official, Chad Pike, said in an interview in Munich. Blackstone is not currently in talks with KarstadtQuelle, said Mr. Pike, who is managing director of Blackstone's European real estate business. KarstadtQuelle's chief executive, Christoph Achenbach, said last week that the company was planning to sell stores and shares to raise 1.6 billion euros and help turn around the struggling company. Before yesterday's gain, stock in KarstadtQuelle had fallen 25 percent since early August.

AFTER AGREEING to an innovative land swap with some concessions on city taxes, WFSB-TV in Hartford plans to start construction next year on a $20 million, 60,000-square-foot studio at the north end of downtown. The station had considered moving outside the city. [C7.] THE PLANNED COMMUNITY of Summerlin near Las Vegas, which is home to more than 87,000 people, is preparing for a new owner. [C6.]

Boston Red Sox defeat Anaheim Angels, 9-3, to lead American League division series, 1-0; photos (M)

As if he were not busy enough, the Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith decided some months ago to embark on the Dickensian pursuit of writing a serial novel for his local newspaper, in his case The Scotsman in Edinburgh. The news was not greeted with universal happiness. ''His agent and all of his publishers were distraught,'' said Neville Moir, the managing editor of Polygon, a small Edinburgh firm that in 1988 cleverly published the first of Mr. McCall Smith's ''No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency'' series, which had an initial run of 1,500 copies. (The series is now five books long and has sold 2.5 million copies in the United States alone.)