ROCKTON, Mass. - Singer Bobby Brown will not face criminal charges after police said they found a small amount of cocaine in his possession.

Brown’s attorney said Tuesday a Brockton District Court clerk magistrate found no probable cause to issue a criminal complaint, but recommended that Brown volunteer to mentor young people, which Brown wanted to do anyway.

Brown agreed to a year’s community service and his attorney said if no other issues arise over the next year, the matter will be struck from the docket.

The case began when police responding to a disturbance at a Brockton hotel on Dec. 1. They said they found the 39-year-old Brown sitting in an SUV in the parking lot, with cocaine in his possession.

The Boston native is the former husband of singer Whitney Houston and stars in the CMT Network show “Gone Country.”

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DEUTSCHKATHARINENBERG, Germany - German treasure hunters began digging Tuesday for what they say may be plunder buried by the Nazis in a man-made cavern near the Czech border.

The area’s mayor, Hans-Peter Haustein, and a man who believes he found the coordinates for the buried booty in a notebook among his deceased father’s belongings, maintain that a scan of the spot has revealed that a large quantity of metal is about 20 meters below the surface.

They believe it to be either gold or silver, based on the scan with a sophisticated metal detector.

A drilling company began boring pilot holes at one-yard intervals trying to find the entrance of the cavern, about 100 yards from the Czech border in the eastern German state of Saxony. Once it is found, the searchers are to snake a camera down into the enclosure to determine exactly what they have found.

“It can’t be iron,” Haustein said as work progressed at the site. “The computer readout clearly indicates gold.”

By late afternoon, however, the most excitement for a crowd of onlookers from the tiny settlement was a short-lived geyser of water that shot up as one of the holes was drilled.

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HONG KONG — It turns out that train tracks in Tibet aren’t where the antelope play.

Earlier this week, Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, issued an unusual public apology for publishing a doctored photograph of Tibetan wildlife frolicking near a high-speed train.

The deception — uncovered by Chinese Internet users who sniffed out a Photoshop scam in the award-winning picture — has brought on a big debate about media ethics, China’s troubled relationship with Tibet, and how pregnant antelope react to noise.

The antelope imbroglio began in the summer of 2006. The Chinese government was celebrating its latest engineering feat, and an enthusiastic wildlife photographer from the Daqing Evening News was camped out on the Tibetan plateau eating energy bars and waiting for antelope to pass.

On July 1, 2006, in an event scheduled to coincide with the Communist Party’s 85th birthday, Chinese President Hu Jintao hosted the launch of China’s train to the “roof of the world.” The $4 billion Qinghai-Xizang railway — a remarkable system that transports passengers to an altitude (16,000 feet) so high that ballpoint pens can explode en route from the air-pressure change — traverses 1,200 miles of rugged terrain to connect the rest of China to the remote Tibetan plateau.

The train, which soon brought many visitors to the pristine homeland of Tibetan Buddhists, became a flash point for China’s long simmering tensions with Tibet. During construction, it drew fierce protests from environmentalists who said it would threaten the breeding grounds of the chiru, an endangered antelope species found mainly in China.

When the train service began, a remarkable photograph appeared in hundreds of newspapers, and it eased environmental concerns. The picture, captioned “Qinghai-Tibet railway opens green passage for wildlife,” featured dozens of antelope galloping peacefully across the Tibetan landscape, unfazed as the gleaming silver train raced beside them.

The photo was the work of Liu Weiqing, a 41-year-old photographer who had been camped with his Jeep on the Tibetan plateau since March, as part of a highly publicized series by the Daqing Evening News, a regional newspaper, to raise awareness of the rare Tibetan antelope. Mr. Liu was also under contract with Xinhua to provide photos for China’s largest government-run news service.

“One man, one car, one year…and a campaign to protect Tibetan antelope,” he wrote on his blog describing the project.

Once nearly wiped out by poachers who made shawls from its wool, the chiru’s numbers have increased in recent years, and the knobby-kneed bovid has emerged as a symbol of China’s environmental-protection efforts. Yingying the Tibetan Antelope is one of the five official mascots of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Some antelope lovers knew from the start that something was wrong with Mr. Liu’s photo. “I was really shocked when I first saw the photo,” says Yang Xin, of the antelope protection group Green River. For starters, he says, many of the antelope in the picture appeared to be pregnant and there were no young with the herd. That was a tip-off because many antelope would have given birth before late June when the photo was supposedly taken.

In late 2006, Mr. Liu’s picture was declared a top 10 “photo of the year” by CCTV, China’s state-run television network. Mr. Liu appeared in fatigues on national TV and described waiting in a pit for eight days for the antelope to pass at precisely the same moment as the train.

“I wanted to capture the harmony among the Tibetan antelope, the train, men and nature,” he told the audience, standing on stage in front of a big projection of the photo.

Media critics say the photo’s deeper message was hard to miss. “It’s such a perfect propaganda photo,” says David Bandurski a researcher at the University of Hong Kong China Media Project. “They don’t tend to give journalism prizes to reports that rock the boat.”

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WASHINGTON - China has agreed to a long-standing U.S. request for access to sensitive military records that Pentagon officials believe might resolve the fate of thousands of U.S. servicemen missing from the Korean War and other Cold War-era conflicts, a Pentagon official said Monday.

The arrangement is scheduled to be publicly announced Friday in Shanghai after a final set of talks to work out certain details, according to Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon’s POW-MIA office.

The deal marks a modest step forward for U.S.-China military relations, which have been strained in recent years, in part by sharp U.S. criticism of China’s military buildup. China has periodically cooperated with the Pentagon on matters related to the search for MIAs, but it has balked at repeated requests to open its military archives for documents of interest to the Pentagon.

Peter Rodman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who dealt with the Chinese on the military archives issue when Donald H. Rumsfeld was defense secretary, said in an interview that the agreement is a positive step.

“It has special meaning to our military,” Rodman said, because it could answer lingering questions about the fate of servicemen whose families have waited for decades to learn more. Rodman said the significance of the deal will depend on exactly what China has agreed to provide and how it is done.

China entered the Korean War on North Korea’s side in the fall of 1950 and succeeded in driving U.S. forces out of the north. Chinese troops killed and captured thousands of American troops; the Chinese also managed many of the POW camps established in North Korea during the war.

More than 8,100 U.S. servicemen are still unaccounted for from the Korean War.

Greer said that at least initially, the arrangement to be announced on Friday will not give U.S. researchers direct access to Chinese records. Instead, Chinese archivists with security clearances acceptable to the People’s Liberation Army will do the document searches and turn over relevant records to U.S. analysts.

“Our people, obviously, would prefer to have their own access,” Rodman said.

Details such as the frequency and volume of the document searches, as well as expenses, are yet to be worked out, Greer said.

Charles A. Ray, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW-MIA affairs, was en route to Shanghai Monday to participate in the signing ceremony Friday, the spokesman said.

China has consistently maintained that all POW questions were settled at the end of the war, but nearly every U.S. administration since then has prodded Beijing to provide information on missing servicemen. The requests include cases of U.S. airmen who went missing after being shot down by the Chinese.

Declassified U.S. Army records from the 1950s make clear that the United States knew of hundreds of American prisoners in China during the Korean War, closely tracked their movements and feared for their lives.

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HAVANA - Cuba’s parliament named Raul Castro president on Sunday, ending nearly 50 years of rule by his brother Fidel but leaving the island’s communist system unshaken.

In a surprise move, officials bypassed younger candidates to name a 77-year-old revolutionary leader, Jose Ramon Machado, to Cuba’s No. 2 spot — apparently assuring the old guard that no significant political changes will be made soon.

The retirement of the ailing 81-year-old president caps a career in which he frustrated efforts by 10 U.S. presidents to oust him.

Raul Castro, 76, stressed that his brother remains “commander in chief” even if he is not president and proposed to consult with Fidel on all major decisions of state — a motion approved by acclamation.

Though the succession was not likely to bring a major shift in the communist government policies that have put Cuba at odds with the United States, many Cubans were hoping it would open the door to modest economic reforms that might improve their daily lives.

Raul Castro indicated at least one change is being contemplated: the revaluation of the Cuban peso, the national currency most people use to pay for government services such as utilities, public transportation and the small amount charged for their monthly food ration.

Cubans complain that government salaries averaging a little more than $19 a month do not cover basic necessities — something Raul Castro acknowledged in a major speech last year. But he said any change would have to be gradual to “prevent traumatic and incongruent effects.”

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PRISTINA, Kosovo - Kosovo is counting on NATO to secure the new nation’s borders and help provide stability as Serbia angrily challenges its statehood, the president said Thursday in his first interview since Kosovo declared independence.

President Fatmir Sejdiu said in an interview with The Associated Press that NATO’s promise not to abandon Kosovo provided a “powerful guarantee” for stability. He warned Serbia that any attempts to partition the fledgling country along ethnic lines would bring “grave consequences.”

Sejdiu spoke before a massive protest turned violent in the Serbian capital, with riot police firing tear gas at Serb rioters who broke into the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade and set fire to the interior. Serbs have protested daily since Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership declared independence on Sunday.

“There is a part of society that wants to destabilize Kosovo and create alarming, hopeless situations and scare the international community,” Sejdiu told the AP. “Any change of borders brings extremely grave consequences for the region, and someone then has to be held accountable.”

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LONDON - In an embarrassing reversal, Britain admitted Thursday that one of its remote outposts — the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia — had twice been used by the United States as a refueling stop for the secret transfer of two terrorism suspects.

The CIA admitted that previous data given to America’s strongest ally “turned out to be wrong.” British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Parliament that recent talks with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice showed two suspects had been on flights to Guantanamo Bay and Morocco in 2002 that stopped on Diego Garcia, a U.S. base on British soil.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair came under heavy criticism for Britain’s close alliance with Washington in the war in Iraq and its part in the U.S.-led war on terrorism. The latest disclosure could pressure the U.S. to identify other countries used in extraordinary renditions, a practice of transferring suspects without formal extradition proceedings that human rights groups say opens the door for third-party countries to torture and interrogate suspects outside international standards.

Miliband told lawmakers he was “very sorry” to have to correct statements made by the government in 2005, 2006 and 2007 that there were no such transfers involving Britain.

He and Rice “both agree that the mistake made in these two cases are not acceptable, and she shares my deep regret that this information has only just come to light,” said Miliband, who has sometimes broken ranks with the British government over military action in Iraq and policies in the Middle East.

The CIA acknowledged that the information previously provided to the British “turned out to be wrong,” despite earlier U.S. assurances that none of the secret flights since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had used British airspace or soil.

The agency, which said that neither of the two suspects was tortured or held on Diego Garcia, reviewed rendition records late last year and discovered that in 2002 the CIA had refueled two separate planes.

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SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. is getting ready to take its bid for Yahoo right to the Web portal’s shareholders, even as analysts wait for a higher offer.

Separately, Yahoo Inc. adopted new severance packages that protect employees in the event of a Microsoft takeover.

Microsoft has hired proxy solicitation group Innisfree M&A Inc. to help oust Yahoo’s 10-member board, all of whom are up for re-election this year.

A source close to the deal who is not authorized to speak publicly about it said Tuesday that Microsoft could spend $20 million to $30 million on that effort.

That’s much less than the $1.4 billion each $1 uptick in Microsoft’s bid would cost. Microsoft’s offer two weeks ago was originally worth about $44.6 billion, or $31 a share. Based on Microsoft’s closing share price Tuesday, the offer is now worth about $40 billion.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker’s board plans to authorize a proxy battle this week, according to The New York Times DealBook blog. It has until March 14 to nominate a slate of directors for Yahoo. Microsoft and its advisers declined to comment.

Election results would be announced at Yahoo’s annual meeting. Last year’s was held in June.

Microsoft also may simultaneously circumvent Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo’s management and ask shareholders to sell their stock to Microsoft directly.

So far, Microsoft has given no signs it will raise its bid, even though a person familiar with earlier talks between the two companies said Microsoft was willing to pay at least $40 per share for Yahoo a year ago. That person spoke on condition of anonymity because the offer was never made public.

In an interview with The Associated Press Monday, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said the software maker was not talking to Yahoo about raising its bid.

Analysts, however, still believe there’s wiggle room.

“I don’t think what they’re saying now precludes” a higher offer, said Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Charles DiBona.

DiBona also said he thinks Microsoft would prefer not to go hostile but will if no progress has been made by the March deadline.

Yahoo reiterated Tuesday that its board is “carefully and thoroughly evaluating all of the company’s strategic alternatives.”

The Web portal and search company’s new severance plans — to take effect if Microsoft succeeds in its takeover bid — cover Yahoo’s top executives and all full-time employees. The plans are designed to keep workers on board even if the company changes hands. They also could make it harder for Microsoft to move Yahoo staff to Redmond and raise the overall cost of integrating the two companies.

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If Jonathan Coulton were to write a song about his own success as a rock star, there would be little mention of the booze, drugs, one-night stands and lonely road laments that typically play out the power chord mix of mythic guitar heroes and music idols.
Instead, Coulton would refer to escaping a life awash in Fritos and Mountain Dew, stuck at his desk writing computer code — “The Office,” set to music. It is, by his own admission, a fairly accurate description of his own former life as a software engineer.

“There’s very little Elvis in me,” Coulton says from his light-filled two-bedroom condo in Brooklyn. “Any rhythm that I have is here in my fingers. It’s nowhere else in my body.”
But those same rhythmic fingers, adept at multiple instruments — along with his gift for writing catchy, quirky songs anchored in sharp observation of the human condition — helped turn Coulton from just another “code monkey” to “The Godfather of Geek Rock.” And he owes much of his success to the Web.
How he did it

In the fall of 2005, Coulton told his wife he was quitting his software job to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a rock star. He could have barely picked a more inauspicious moment. At 36, he was bearing down on middle age — and his wife had just given birth to their first child, a daughter.

“I have known some bitter people in my life who never did what they wanted to do, and I didn’t wanna be that person,” says Coulton.

He also rationalized that letting go of something safe for something uncertain would be a more courageous example for his daughter of how to live.

When he was packing up his office cubicle to begin his new adventure, a colleague suggested that Coulton try to write one song every week for an entire year.

The idea both scared and intrigued him. Creativity on demand week after week was a daunting prospect, but it appealed to Coulton’s desire for at least some kind of structure in his path to making a living through playing music.

From a tiny, converted closet studio in his home he began musing about the world around him — writing songs, recording them, then posting them to his web site. He called the project ambiguously, “Thing a Week.” It was rarely an easy process.

“There were a lot of times when I would have an idea that I thought was really bad, or stupid, but sometimes that would be the only idea that I would have, and so I didn’t have any choice but to do it,” Coulton says. “That’s definitely how a lot of those songs ended up being about such weird things, or news items.”

He became a master of observation of the things that surrounded him. A Shopvac inspired a tune by the same name about a life of suburban angst and regret.

When he saw a photo online of a giant squid, he wrote a song called “I Crush Everything,” in which a lonely giant squid wants to play with the ships he sees sailing above, but fears he’ll destroy them with his innocent but deadly embrace.

Coulton also found a rich source of material from his former life. A song titled, “RE: Your Brains,” tells the story of an office worker being besieged by a co-worker-turned-zombie, who of course wants to eat his brains.

But Coulton is perhaps best known for the tune “Code Monkey,” about a software engineer who dreams of a better life. The song has become an anthem for downtrodden office workers and has helped propel his fame.

Coulton also broke through to fans on the Internet with a couple of unexpected cover songs. His rendition of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s hip-hop ode to the bountiful behind, “Baby Got Back,” was retooled as a softly crooned folk-love song. Listeners loved it.

But while Coulton’s online audience was growing — his bank account was not, mainly because he was offering his songs for free under a creative commons license and asking for “tips.”

When he gave his fans the options of buying the music outright for a set price, making a donation or downloading for free, so many began ponying up that he was soon making more money than he did as a software engineer.

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PRISTINA, Kosovo - Kosovo’s parliament declared the disputed territory a nation on Sunday, mounting a historic bid to become an “independent and democratic state” backed by the U.S. and European allies but bitterly contested by Serbia and Russia.

Serbia immediately denounced the declaration as illegal, and Russia also rejected it, demanding an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, which was set for Sunday afternoon.

President Bush said the U.S. would work to prevent violence after the declaration and the European Union appealed for calm, mindful of the risk that the declaration could plunge the turbulent Balkans back into instability.

In the Kosovo Serb stronghold city of Mitrovica, hand grenades were thrown at buildings of the European Union and United Nations following the declaration.

One grenade exploded at the U.N. mission causing no significant damage, a Western source in the city said. EU officials evacuated their building, which houses the team preparing a mission to supervise Kosovo’s independence.

“Officials abandoned the (EU) building. Security guards said two hand grenades had been thrown. One had exploded,” the source told Reuters.

“Kosovo is a republic — an independent, democratic and sovereign state,” Kosovo’s parliament speaker Jakup Krasniqi said as the chamber burst into applause. Across the capital, Pristina, revelers danced in the streets, fired guns into the air and waved red and black Albanian flags in jubilation at the birth of the world’s newest country.

Sunday’s declaration was carefully orchestrated with the U.S. and key European powers, and Kosovo was counting on swift international recognition that could come as early as Monday, when EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels, Belgium.

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