(09-14) 06:55 PDT DETROIT, (AP) —

The United Auto Workers union likely chose General Motors Corp. as the lead company in labor talks with the Detroit Three because GM is considered the healthiest and the UAW wants to prevent the nation’s largest automaker from moving more manufacturing overseas, industry analysts said.

Two local union officials said they received notice Thursday afternoon that GM would be the lead company in the contract negotiations and the UAW’s potential strike target. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are private.

Contracts between the UAW and GM expire Friday at midnight. Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC have agreed to indefinite extensions of their contracts, according to spokeswomen at those automakers. Typically, the union negotiates an agreement with the lead company it chooses, then reaches similar agreements with the other two.

Talks with the nation’s largest automaker were continuing into the night Thursday, said a person who was briefed on the negotiations. The person requested anonymity because the talks are private.

Rumors of a possible bankruptcy were swirling around GM as recently as 2005. But the automaker has chalked up three profitable quarters as it shed thousands of jobs and closed plants in a massive restructuring. GM posted net income of $891 million in the second quarter of this year.

“Historically, the union picked the strongest company financially and operationally so that they could extract a rich contract out of the more prosperous one and go about imposing it on the weaker companies,” said David Healy, an analyst with Burnham Securities.

Aaron Bragman, an auto industry analyst with the consulting firm Global Insight, said the UAW also wants GM to commit to building products at union plants.

GM has the best international connections of the Detroit Three and could easily move more products to lower-cost countries, Bragman said. For example, GM Daewoo exported nearly 117,000 Chevrolet Aveos from South Korea to the United States last year.

Bragman also said GM has been pushing hardest for the UAW to form a trust fund and take over the automakers’ unfunded long-term retiree health care liability, estimated at a combined $90 billion. Negotiators were discussing how much the companies will put into the fund and what the union will get in exchange for taking on the liability.

News that the union was receptive to the health care trust fund was applauded by Wall Street on Thursday. GM shares rose $3.04, or 10.1 percent, to $33.29. Ford also rose on the news, closing up 42 cents, or 5.6 percent, at $7.92.

Bargaining has been under way for months, formally beginning in July. Until Thursday, talks appeared to be progressing, but several local union leaders at GM plants said they have been told to begin preparations in case of a strike.

Workers at a Cadillac assembly and stamping complex in Lansing were readying their union hall to be the area’s strike headquarters and are putting together picket signs, said Chris “Tiny” Sherwood, president of UAW Local 652.

Such preparations are standard in the days before the contracts expire. But Sherwood, who has been in touch with a member of the union’s national bargaining committee, said he was told the talks took a turn for the worse Wednesday night.

“Apparently from last night until this morning, everything’s changed,” Sherwood said Thursday. “I’ve never been asked to get my hall ready for a strike in the last four contracts.”

Union officials at several other plants who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak about the talks said they, too, were holding strike meetings and getting their membership ready in case the international union calls for a walkout.

UAW international spokesman Roger Kerson in Detroit would not comment Thursday afternoon, nor would GM spokesman Tom Wickham.

It’s difficult to tell whether the strike preparation talk is just union drama before the deadline or it’s actually serious strike talk, said Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who specializes in labor issues.

“There’s a fine line between theater and substance in negotiations,” Shaiken said. “Given the stakes, given the complexity, given the tension, you’ve got a temporary derailment. It’s unclear whether it’s more serious than that.”

David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, said he still does not think either side has the stomach for a strike.

“I would expect some tension down near the end. At some point in any of these negotiations you get to a point where there’s some tough talk. It just normally arrives a lot earlier than this,” he said.

New contracts were reached with the auto companies without strikes in 1999 and 2003. There were strikes at individual GM plants during contract talks in 1996, but there hasn’t been a nationwide strike during negotiations since 1976, when Ford plants were shut down.

Workers at two GM parts plants walked out for 54 days in 1998, costing the automaker $2.2 billion. That strike, which occurred between years when national negotiations were held, was over work rules and GM’s plans to eliminate jobs.

This year’s talks are considered critical to the struggling Detroit automakers, which last year lost a combined $15 billion. All have seen sales losses as high gasoline prices sent car buyers away from their trucks and sport utility vehicles. They have cut thousands of jobs and shuttered plants in an effort to compete with Japanese automakers.

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MUMBAI: An Indian woman in a flowing, beaded gown glides through a pond. As the drumbeats of the Indian countryside patter, a dancing phalanx of tunic-clad women twirls. A mosquito net brushes over the womans lover. A silver anklet splashes into a pond.

These are scenes from the trailer of a forthcoming movie, “Saawariya.” The film, whose Hindi title means beloved, has an Indian director and cast. It is melodramatic. Its characters speak Hindi and burst into eight song-and-dance routines. It is, in other words, vintage Bollywood - but for one thing.

It is brought to you by Hollywood.

The studio behind “Saawariya,” Sony Pictures, is the first in what will become a wave of American studios to produce their own kaleidoscopic, song-and-dance Bollywood films. The American studios are keen to make money in India, but in a nation where $19 of every $20 spent at the box office goes to domestic films, the studios are deciding to join Bollywood, not try to beat it.

“The importing of American films into India is not filling a gap,” Gareth Wigan, vice chairman of Columbia TriStar, the Sony division that produced the film, said by telephone from Los Angeles. “Youre not bringing a dish to a bare table. Youre bringing a dish to a table where you have to move a lot of other dishes to fit in, and thats not true in a lot of other countries.”

And so begins a strange competition to make the best Bollywood film, pitting Hollywood, the worlds most profitable industry, against Indias own studios, the reigning masters of the genre, which make more movies and sell more tickets than any film industry in the world.

With movie audiences shrinking in America and swelling here, Hollywood wants to tap into Indias market. But Indian-made films captured 95 percent of the countrys box-office sales in 2006, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Domestic films are just as dominant in the United States, but they account for just 35 percent of the box office in France, 33 percent in Japan and 12 percent in Britain, according to 2005 data published by two scholars, David Waterman and Sang-Woo Lee.

“There is no country on the planet, other than India and the United States, that approaches that level of domestic business,” Andrew Cripps, the president of Paramount Pictures International, said by telephone from Los Angeles. And so Paramount, too, is contemplating Indian productions.

Walt Disney has partnered with an Indian studio, Yash Raj Films, to make animated movies for Indians. The first film, “Roadside Romeo,” due next summer, is a parable of Indian inequality, featuring a dog abandoned by rich owners in Mumbai and forced to brave its hungry streets.

And Warner Brothers is developing two Bollywood projects, including one song-and-dance smorgasbord, according to Richard Fox, the head of its international division. In a telephone interview, he said Warner would seek to earn a majority of its Indian sales from Bollywood productions. The studio plans three to six movies a year in the coming years, all with Indian talent.

“Were not coming to change anything,” Fox said.

That is Hollywoods Indian mantra. Sanjay Leela Bhansali, the director of “Saawariya,” was at first wary that Hollywood would trample him, and was surprised when Sony left him alone. At most, he said, Wigan would offer gentle, helpful suggestions for the script, which is based on Fyodor Dostoyevskys short story “White Nights.”

“There was no compromise asked of the film,” Bhansali said, staring out at the Arabian Sea from his stylish north Mumbai apartment.

On Saturday, the International Herald Tribune was permitted to view the movie trailer, which had yet to be shown even to Sony executives.

Hollywood is now Bollywoods competitor, but local filmmakers say Hollywood is wise in attempting to mimic it, not supplant it.

“Theyre doing the right thing,” Yash Chopra, one of Bollywoods most revered filmmakers, said in an interview. “To come to a country to make a film is either to understand the culture or break the culture.”

Others doubt that U.S. executives grasp the nuances that entice Indian audiences. Tyler Cowen, the author of “Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the Worlds Cultures,” said it was unusual for Hollywood “to try to copy the native style so exactly.”

“That is unusual for a reason,” he said. “It usually doesnt work.”

“Bollywood,” whose name amalgamates Hollywood and Bombay, the former name for Mumbai, refers to Hindi-language movies made in Mumbai, which account for roughly one-fifth of Indias 1,000 or so annual productions.

VERNON HILLS, Ill.—CDW Corp. () on Tuesday announced that the distributor of hardware, software and technology accessories has agreed to be acquired by a private equity company in a $7.3 billion deal.

Under the agreement with Chicago’s Madison Dearborn Partners LLC, CDW shareholders will receive $87.75 in cash for each share of common stock, CDW said in a news release issued after the close of business.

CDW said that’s a 16.1 percent premium over the Vernon Hills-based company’s $75.56 closing share price Friday and a premium of approximately 31.4 percent over the average closing share price during the previous 90 trading days.

Earlier Tuesday, CDW’s shares rose to $83.11, a seven-year high, after The Wall Street Journal reported it was in talks to be acquired.

John A. Edwardson, CDW’s chairman and chief executive officer, said in the release that the buyout represents a new chapter for the company.

“We are pleased to partner with the world-class investment firm of MDP, whose investment goals are closely aligned with our strategy and long-term objectives,” he said.

Messages seeking further comment were left for CDW Tuesday evening and attempts to reach Madison Dearborn Partners were not successful. Messages left for both before the announcement were not returned Tuesday.

The acquisition is expected to be completed by early in the fourth quarter of this year.

The 23-year-old CDW buys computers and related equipment from such manufacturers as Hewlett-Packard Co. (), IBM Corp. () and Apple Computer Inc. () and markets them to small and mid-size businesses, governments and school systems, customizing the products and offering other services.

Last year, CDW earned $266.1 million on sales of $6.8 billion. The stock, which has traded as low as $50.28 in the past 52 weeks, topped its previous 52-week high of $79.71.