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Byline: - Staff and Wire Services

India set to seize pirated U.S. films

NEW DELHI - A Delhi court has heeded Hollywood's request and issued a warrant that empowers police to search for and seize pirated films anywhere in the city, an aggressive maneuver in the copyright wars.

The type of court order involved, known as a general search and seizure warrant, is normally reserved for matters of national security, not copyright infringement, Indian lawyers said Wednesday.

The Encino-based Motion Picture Association, the global arm of the Motion Picture Association of America, got a magistrate to issue such a warrant for the entire city on July 19 because of the scope of piracy and the police force's difficulty in combating it, said Chander Lall, a lawyer for the group.

The MPA, based in Encino, initially tried to keep the warrant quiet in India for fear of tipping off those illegally selling pirated movies, Lall told The Associated Press.

Bomb detectors to be developed

PASADENA - Viaspace Inc. on Wednesday announced that its Arroyo Sciences subsidiary is collaborating with ViaLogy Corp. to develop and commercialize instruments to detect concealed improvised explosive devices worn by suicide bombers and other concealed weapons.

Viaspace is a Pasadena-based company that turns proven space and defense technologies from NASA and the Department of Defense into hardware and software solutions.

ViaLogy develops and markets active signal processing software solutions based on signal processing technology that detects and discriminates data obscured by background noise.

The goal of the Arroyo Sciences project code-named Deepscan is to detect concealed explosives from standoff distances, according to AJ Abdallat, chief operating office of Viaspace.

MasterCard has plans to go public

NEW YORK - MasterCard Inc., one of the world's largest credit-card brands, on Wednesday unveiled plans for an initial public offering to help reshape its business during a time of unprecedented competitive and legal challenges mounted by rivals.

The Purchase, N.Y.-based credit-card association is controlled by 1,400 financial institutions that issue MasterCard-branded products. The IPO is expected in next year's first quarter, and will transfer a 49 percent equity stake and voting control into the hands of investors.

The move comes as both MasterCard and larger rival Visa USA Inc. contend with a court decision that allows member banks - for the first time - to issue competing card brands of companies such as American Express Corp. and Discover Financial Services, a unit of Morgan Stanley Inc. This opened the door for those companies to file lawsuits against the two credit-card giants seeking unspecified damages stemming from anticompetitive practices.

Machinists are set to take strike vote

SEATTLE - Boeing Co. braced Wednesday for a possible strike at its commercial airplane operations after leaders of more than 18,000 machinists advised workers to reject a final contract offer they deemed ``insulting.''

Hundreds of workers used their lunch breaks Wednesday to protest the company's offer, as Boeing provided its own take on the contract in an effort to shore up support for the offer.

Union members will vote on the three-year offer today. Under union rules, the contract will automatically be ratified unless two-thirds of covered workers approve a strike.

A tally is expected this evening. If a strike is approved, machinists would walk off the job at 12:01 a.m. Friday, the day the current three-year pact expires.