(02-24) 08:17 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) —

Whitewater. The word symbolizes years of legal troubles for Hillary Rodham Clinton during her husband’s presidency. The scandal stoked a $52 million criminal investigation and offered moments of extraordinary spectacle, including the unprecedented grand jury appearance by a first lady.

“It’s not a first that I’m particularly pleased about,” she acknowledged at the time.

Today, Clinton factors the lessons of Whitewater into her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. “For 15 years, I have been the object of the Republican attack machine,” she says. “And I’m still here.”

What became the Whitewater saga grew out of a long-ago Arkansas land deal in which the Clintons said they lost money.

Rising political stars often find themselves standing at the intersection of business opportunities and friendship. Bill and Hillary Clinton were no exceptions.

When Bill Clinton was running for Arkansas governor in the late 1970s, they became partners with businessman Jim McDougal and his wife, Susan, in a planned vacation home development on the White River in the Ozarks.

The Clintons’ Whitewater investment never would have created a stir if not for reports of fraud at the McDougals’ savings and loan and a New York Times article about the Clintons and the McDougals during the 1992 presidential campaign.

That and the legal work Hillary Clinton did for the McDougals’ financial institution were enough to send federal regulators scurrying to Little Rock, Ark.

Investigators began taking another look at the warehoused records of the McDougals’ old S&L. Questions lingered:

_Had the McDougals taken money from their savings and loan to pay down the bank loans on Whitewater?

_In doing so, had they lightened the financial load on their partners, the Clintons?

A Hollywood producer would be hard-pressed to find a more colorful cast of characters than those mixing it up with the Clintons in the Whitewater deal.

Jim McDougal, in failing health and living in a trailer after regulators took away his S&L, remained the bombastic personality he had been in the days when he had money to burn. All he needed was an audience.

There always was one Д the press, prosecutors, political pundits Д during Whitewater. Not to mention Republicans feasting on the Clintons’ legal problems.

Whitewater investigators are “going to hang” the Clintons, McDougal proclaimed from prison in 1997.

Prosecutors never nailed the Clintons, but they tried, from late 1993 to 2000. First the Justice Department. Then a specially appointed outside prosecutor. Then court-appointed Independent Counsel Ken Starr.

An assortment of controversies were tacked on, one by one, to the initial probe by Starr, a prominent Washington lawyer and a conservative. His conservative credentials were seized on by Clinton loyalists who decried Starr’s inquiry as politically motivated.

Hillary Clinton’s role in firing employees in the White House travel office also came under scrutiny. So did the gathering by some low-level White House aides of FBI background files on prominent Republicans.

Bill Clinton’s alleged perjury and obstruction regarding his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky was added to the list. The Clinton-Lewinsky sex scandal captured the nation’s attention for a year and led to his impeachment. The Senate acquitted him.

In the end, Jim McDougal died in prison. His ex-wife, imprisoned after refusing to testify against the Clintons, was pardoned by President Clinton on his last day in office in 2001.

The years of investigations left the Clintons with legal bills running into the millions.

Two years before the Lewinksy affair, prosecutors and a Republican-controlled Congress focused on the suicide of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster, a longtime law firm partner of Hillary Clinton.

Documents pertaining to Whitewater had been moved out of Foster’s office by White House aides after his death. Were the records of Hillary Clinton’s work for the McDougals’ failing savings and loan among them? And where were the records now?

Her legal work for the S&L seemed minimal. But prosecutors could not be sure because they never could seem to find her time sheets documenting what services she had provided to McDougal.

The missing billing records became the Rosetta Stone of Whitewater. Congress wanted them, as did Starr’s office.

Then one day in early January 1996, out popped the records from the White House family residence. The pile of computer printouts detailed her work for the McDougals’ failing S&L in the mid-1980s. A Clinton staffer said she had found the printouts stashed in a box in a storage room.

Prosecutors were furious. They had issued a subpoena for the billing records 18 months earlier. The prosecutors summoned Hillary Clinton, making her the only first lady to appear before a federal grand jury.

The billing records did not present a pretty picture regarding Hillary Clinton. They showed that she drafted a real estate document regulators later said had misled bank examiners. Prosecutors concluded that McDougal and others had used her legal work to conceal unlawful activity.

Had she obstructed the investigation by hiding the billing records? Had the records been removed from Foster’s office after his suicide? Neither prosecutors nor Congress were able to answer the questions.

She said she did not know where the billing records had been and that she could not recall the work she had done for the S&L 10 years earlier.

Prosecutors concluded they did not have enough to prove that she was a knowing participant in the criminal conduct by McDougal or others.

Starr’s probe left a legacy of anger among congressional Democrats who saw Whitewater as an example of an out-of-control criminal investigation. Republicans, too, had endured a prolonged independent counsel investigation Д Lawrence Walsh’s probe into the Iran-Contra scandal. Congress put its foot down, declaring there would be no more independent counsels. So lawmakers allowed the law that authorized court-appointed prosecutors to lapse.

By the end of 2006, their legal bills paid off, the former president and his presidency-seeking wife had assets of at least $10 million and possibly as much as $50 million with no liabilities.

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On the Web:

Independent counsel’s report: «icreport.access.gpo.gov»/

SHANGHAI: It is no surprise that instant noodles are big business China, given that many of the countrys 1.3 billion people eat them every day.

The noodles - priced a less than a dollar and quick to prepare - are eaten with relish everywhere from offices in Shanghai to construction sites in Shenzhen.

“My husband and son love instant noodles. They eat them as breakfast and as a midnight snack, more than twice each week,” said a 41-year-old woman who gave her name as Mrs. Yun, as she wandered down the instant noodle aisle in a Shanghai supermarket, confronted by dozens of brands of instant noodles.

With an estimated value of $6.6 billion, Chinas instant noodle business is set to double to about $13 billion by 2012, and players are scrambling for market share and brand recognition.

Colorful packaging, tie-ins with the Olympic Games in Beijing in August and new flavors and recipes, like low-fat noodles, are some of the strategies adopted by manufacturers fighting out the “noodle wars” in the aisles.

China is the worlds biggest market for instant noodles. Its consumers spend about $5 per capita per year on instant noodles, according to Euromonitor International.

Instant noodle packet prices range from one yuan, or 14 cents, to five yuan, or 70 cents, for the high-end brands, which are gaining in popularity and yield high margins.

So how can noodle manufacturers get a piece of the action? Product development, advertising and distribution appear to be crucial, according to players and experts.

“The core to our business is brand management,” said Alex Lo, president of Uni-President Enterprises, Taiwans largest food conglomerate and the third largest maker of noodles for the Chinese market.

Increasing brand recognition is crucial and total advertising spending promoting instant noodles in China in 2006 amounted to $237.4 million, a 19 percent jump from the previous year, according to Nielsen.

But turning advertising and promotions into additional sales will not be an easy task. Despite the size of the market, the Chinese noodle industry is dominated by one company, Tingyi, founded in Taiwan. Its Master Kong brand commands a lofty 43.3 percent share of the market, according to CIMB-GK Securities. Its closest rival, the Japanese joint venture Nissin Hualong, has 14.2 percent, followed by Uni-President, with 10.5 percent, according to CIMB-GK.

Driven by demand from more affluent and health-conscious eaters, one of the biggest growth areas is in low-fat versions of traditional instant noodles, which are deep fried as part of the production process.

“Healthy positioning of instant noodle brands are the key factor driving consumer buying patterns in Greater China,” said Michelle Huang, an analyst at Euromonitor International. “In mainland China, instant noodles manufacturers launched new variants with added nutritional value in an effort to break the traditional perception of the instant noodles as being unhealthy.”

Nissin, one of the biggest noodle makers in Japan, has been promoting non-fried variants in China and at home.

Through a 2004 tie-up with Hebei Hualong FN Industry Group, it has formed Nissin Hualong Food. Its main competitor, Tingyi, owes its success to entering the market early and building up strong brand loyalty with wide distribution.

“Tingyi has been able to garner significant market share due to its distribution network,” said Renee Tai, an analyst at CIMB-GK in Hong Kong. “Its not just ads and pushing products through with promotional activities, but its really getting the products through to customers.”

Tingyi has located its manufacturing facilities close to distribution centers, which ensure it gets its products to market quickly and smoothly, Tai added.

To maintain market share and lower the impact of soaring raw material prices, Tingyi is focusing on the high-end noodles where margins are bigger, said Tai in a recent research report.

Noodles in China have a long history. Opinions differ over whether the Chinese, Italians or Arabs invented the food, but a 2005 discovery of a sealed bowl, believed to be 4,000 years old, in northwestern China could swing the debate in Chinas favor.

Less controversial is the instant noodle, whose origins date to 1958 when Momofuku Ando, founder of Nissin Food Products, created his now famous “Chicken Ramen” noodles to feed the masses in post-war Japan.

Offering instant noodles in a styrofoam container, in which they could be cooked by adding hot water, made the product a worldwide hit with people looking to eat on the run.

Nissin is now poised, along with other market players like Uni-President, to gain from a blitz of retail and marketing promotions leading up to the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Bad weather in China is continuing to cause havoc for millions of people as the country battles the heaviest snowstorms in 50 years.

Flights have been grounded and power plants have failed. The emergency services today struggled to control crowds of commuters trying to get to work.

The blizzards and ice storms have created a transport crisis, and forecasters have warned that conditions will get worse.

Snowstorms and freezing rain were predicted to hit central and eastern China, putting more pressure on already strained transport, communications and power networks.

The weather had affected 67 million people and the economic loss was 18.2bn yuan (1.27bn), the civil affairs ministry said.

More than 34cm of snow fell yesterday in Nanjing in the east, the city’s heaviest in 50 years, halting air and rail services. A third of flights in Beijing and Shanghai were delayed, throwing the national train service into chaos.

Military police kept order at a Beijing railway station today, where 400,000 passengers were stranded.

Hundreds of police and soldiers tried to control swelling crowds at a major train station in the southern city of Guangzhou, where about 200,000 travellers were stranded.

Police blew whistles and used loud hailers, while soldiers stood guard.

The crowd of mostly migrant factory workers filled the plaza in front of the station. They eventually spilled out on to a busy thoroughfare, which had to be closed to accommodate them.

Radio announcements urged people not to go to the station because most trains had been cancelled and tickets were not being sold until February 7, the start of Chinese New Year and the country’s biggest annual holiday.

The bad weather started two weeks ago, when sleet and snowstorms snapped the power lines of scores of electric passenger trains in Hunan province, a midpoint for the busy railway from Guangzhou to Beijing.

As many as 5% of China’s coal-fired power plants, which generate 78% of the country’s electricity, were shut because snow hampered coal shipments, the National Development and Reform Commission said.

Zhuzhou Smelter Group, China’s largest zinc refiner, said shortages had forced it to cut production.

Storms have also closed roads. Some 24 deaths have been reported since the heavy snow began on January 10, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Guangzhou rarely gets snow. Officials there were today trying to find temporary shelter for migrant workers in schools and convention centres.