(12-23) 10:26 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) —

Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul on Sunday defended his efforts in Congress to bring home money to his Texas district, despite his long-held aversion to big government and congressional votes to reign in federal spending.

“I’ve never voted for an earmark in my life,” the Texas congressman said under questioning on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about reports that he has requested hundreds of millions of dollars for special projects in his home district.

“I put them in because I represent people who are asking for some of their money back,” said Paul, who likened it to taking a tax credit. “I’m against the tax system, but I take all my tax credits. I want to get their money back for the people.”

The 10-term congressman and longshot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination added that although he has requested special projects known as earmarks, he ultimately ends up voting against them in the House. Paul is known in Congress as “Dr. No” for his votes against some types of government spending, including a medal for Pope John Paul II and civil rights leader Rosa Parks because of the cost to taxpayers.

For his home state, however, Paul has sought money for water projects, a nursing program, to expand a hospital cancer center and to promote Texas shrimp.

Just last week, President Bush complained about thousands of earmarks in a massive spending bill Congress sent to him.

As the only Republican candidate opposed to the Iraq war, Paul was an anti-war asterisk in the race until his campaign began raising money, most of it over the Internet. He brought in a record $6 million in one day, and $18 million in less than three months, though he still registers in single digits in most polls.

Paul, who ran for president as a libertarian in 1988, was asked whether he’d run as a third-party candidate next year if he loses the GOP nomination.

Paul said that was unlikely. “I have no intention, no plans of doing it, and that’s about 99.9 percent,” said Paul, a 72-year-old obstetrician-gynecologist and former Air Force flight surgeon.

On other issues:

_Paul railed against the government’s anti-drug policy, complaining that federal law overrules state laws that permit medicinal use of marijuana for pain or other symptoms of debilitating illnesses such as cancer, multiple sclerosis and other diseases. “This war on drugs is totally out of control. If you want to regulate cigarettes and alcohol and drugs, it should be at the state level,” he said.

_Paul said he wants to eliminate foreign aid to Israel and other nations. “Why make Israel so dependent?” he asked. “They can’t defend their borders without coming to us.”

MUMBAI: Gaurav Bamania, a hedge fund analyst who works in one of the many downtown office towers that dominate the skyline of Indias financial capital, could easily eat lunch at one of the better restaurants here. Instead, Bamania, 26, follows a practice dating back more than a century: He has a hot meal, lovingly cooked at home by his grandmother and delivered to his desk every workday.

In India, where many traditions are being rapidly overturned by globalization, the practice of eating a home-cooked meal for lunch lives on.

To achieve that in this sprawling urban amalgamation of an estimated 25 million people, where long commutes by train and bus are routine, residents rely on an intricately organized, labor-intensive operation that puts some automated high-tech systems to shame. It manages to deliver tens of thousands of meals to workplaces all over the city with near-clockwork precision.

At the heart of this unusual network is a chain of delivery men called dabbawallas. The word comes from tiffin dabba, a colonial reference to a box containing a light meal, and walla, the man who carries. The precision and efficiency of the dabbawallas has been likened to the Internet, where packets identified by unique markers are ferried to their destination via a complex network.

“There is a service called FedEx that is similar to ours, but they dont deliver lunch,” said one dabbawalla, Dhondu Kondaji Chowdhury.

The British introduced the service 125 years ago after the city was flooded by workers from different regions. The dabbawallas made it possible for workers to bridge the distance between work and home and between different regional food variations.

The service has until recently thrived purely on word of mouth. But it is now getting a high-tech lift, as the dabbawallas have joined up with Web service providers. An office worker, with someone lined up at home to cook, can sign up for the service through text messaging or e-mail.

In the urban sprawl of Mumbai, the dabbawalla system has withstood the onslaught of office cafeterias, neighborhood eateries, multinational food chains and expensive restaurants, where reservations are hard to come by. The dabbawallas deliver even in the pouring rain or during political strife. And business is still growing, at a steady rate of 5 percent to 10 percent a year.

A network of wallas picks up the boxes from customers homes or from people who cook lunches to order, then delivers the meals to a local railroad station. The boxes are sorted for delivery to various stations in Mumbai and then sorted again and carried to their destinations. The service reverses after lunch, and the empty boxes are delivered back home.

The secret of the system is in the colored codes painted on the side of the boxes, which tell the dabbawallas where the food comes from and which railroad stations it must pass through on its way to a specific office in a specific building in Mumbai.

“We dont know how we could survive without this system,” said Vrinda Chiplunkar, who prepares lunches of lentils, vegetables, rice, chapatis and salad for her husband, Chandrashekhar Chiplunkar, who runs the foreign exchange division of Oman International Bank. “The old-fashioned, inexpensive dabbawalla system is a rare survivor in this fast-paced world.”

The Chiplunkars are loyal customers of the 64-year-old Chowdhury. Like many dabbawallas, Chowdhury is a migrant from a rural village in the region. He is illiterate but has learned on the job to read the numbers and letters painted on the lunch boxes and to sign his name to customer receipts.

“This is the best profession for somebody like me in Mumbai,” Chowdhury said. With the 5,000 rupees, about $125, he earns every month, he manages to support his wife, son and daughter in a two-room home in Goregaon, a distant suburb. Chowdhury said he dreams of sending his son, a ninth-grade student, to college.

There is no dearth of dabbawallas as younger men stream into the city from the vicinity of Chowdhurys native village.

For Suresh Shivekar, who hauls lunch boxes on a train from Versova to Colaba, the workday starts at 8:30 a.m. He transports the boxes by bicycle and arrives at the train station not long afterward. The boxes are sorted there and loaded on to a large wooden crate, which Shivekar heaves onto the train. On a regular day, the luggage compartment at the front of the train is a sea of color-coded lunch boxes.

The reliability of the dabbawalla system pays off with loyal customers. Anand Sahasrebuddhe, 46, who works in the Churchgate offices of ACC, one of Indias largest cement and concrete makers, has been depending on them for 26 years.

(11-20) 07:05 PST West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP) —

Office Depot Inc., the nation’s second biggest office-supply store chain, said Tuesday its third-quarter profit fell 9 percent, hurt by lower consumer spending, an economic slowdown in the U.K. and higher costs in North America.

The company had delayed its quarterly results to revise past financial statements after a whistleblower complaint prompted an independent review of vendor-program accounting. It found weakness in its internal controls and led to the firing of four merchandising employees and 2006 and 2007 results being restated.

Delray Beach-based Office Depot has retained Peter J. Solomon Co. to review its capital structure options and independently advise the company on the proper course of action.

Net income fell to $117.5 million, or 43 cents per share, in the three months ended Sept. 29 from $129.1 million, or 45 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. The latest period includes a $33 million tax benefit.

Sales rose 2 percent to $3.94 billion from $3.86 billion in the prior-year period.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial predicted profit of 40 cents per share on slightly higher revenue of $3.95 billion.

Its shares fell 40 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $18.40 in morning trading Tuesday.

The company said North American retail same-store sales fell 5 percent for the quarter, hurt mostly by the slumping housing market. Same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least a year, is a key indicator of retailer performance since it measures growth at existing stores rather than newly opened ones.

North American business services segment sales fell 3 percent. While international sales grew 13 percent from the year-ago quarter, the company said the international division still hasn’t met expectations.

“There are signs of an economic slowdown in the U.K. which, if it persists, could provide continued challenges to the division’s operations in the future,” Office Depot said in a statement.

The company announced Oct. 29 it would be delaying its earnings report, due out the next day, because of the vendor program review. The news sent the company’s shares down 14 percent that day.

The company later said it would revise past financial statements. That is because the review found that during the period beginning in the third quarter of 2006 through the second quarter of 2007, funds due or received from vendors were recognized in the current quarter but should have been deferred into later periods.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Office Depot said it would reduce fiscal 2006 third-quarter earnings per share by 2 cents and fiscal 2006 fourth-quarter earnings by 3 cents. For its 2007 fiscal year, the company would reduce first-quarter earnings per share by a penny and second-quarter earnings by 2 cents.

As a result, related amounts of about 7 cents a share would be recognized in future periods, beginning in the second half of 2007 and in decreasing amounts in years from 2008 through 2010.

Analysts were initially concerned when the company delayed its earnings, and released few details.

Once the company revealed results from the review, analysts said the news alleviated some uncertainty on Wall Street as to the magnitude of the accounting issues.

Office Depot has annual sales of more than $15 billion and sells to customers in 42 countries. It is the nation’s second-largest office supplies retailer behind Framingham, Mass.-based Staples Inc.